


A Nightmare for Christmas

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2019-01-28 11:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12605920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: The Jones family is exchanging gifts when Martha sees his face. For an awful moment she thinks she might still be asleep...but this is certainly no dream.





	A Nightmare for Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Amazingly, one of my first thoughts after watching EoT was what would Martha’s reaction have been to seeing the Master in her head? For that matter, how would the rest of her family react? Thus, fic!

The Jones family is exchanging gifts when it happens.

Misjudging the distance of a carefully thrown package from Leo, Martha fumbles and drops it and swears under her breath as she stoops to retrieve it.

“Dr. Butterfingers.” Leo teases as he returns to the tree. “I’d hate to have you give me an injection with coordination like that. You’d just as likely stab me in the leg.”

Martha rolls her eyes, “Oh shut up.” and settles down next to Tom to open her present. Yet again though her fingers are stiff and clumsy and she has trouble focusing on the pattern of snowmen on the paper. There is, she consoles herself, a lot of tape at the ends though. Leo has never been good with wrapping presents properly.

“You alright?” Tom asks, finally handing her a pair of scissors after she’s struggled with it for close to a minute.

“Just tired I guess.” Martha admits and begins to cut at the tape, shooting a brief glare at her brother who is oblivious as he doles out the final presents. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“Yeah.” Tom says absently. “Bad dreams.”

Martha stops cutting and stares at him. “How’d you know that?”

“No I’m saying _I’ve_ been having bad dreams lately too.” Tom tells her and there’s something in how he says it. They’ve been on conflicting schedules for a month or two, he working at night and she during the day so they haven’t spent a lot of time in bed together and when they have they certainly haven’t been sleeping.

“About what?”

Tom looks confused but obliges her. “Just...I dunno. Bad dreams.”

“And you wake up and you can’t remember it?” Martha pressed and Tom’s eyes widened slightly.

“Yeah. That’s exactly...”

There is a choked scream from the other side of the room and Martha looks up to see her mother blinking rapidly, mouth open and making awful little gasping noises like she’s having a seizure.

A split second later and Martha knows why. The Master fills her mind, huge and horrible and laughing and she recoils into the sofa with a barely strangled scream and puts her hands to her head.

“It’s him!” Francine wails from across the room, her hands clawing at her face. “Oh my god it’s him! In my head! He’s in my head! Get him out! Get him _out_!”

Leo is on his knees, rocking back and forth, his face a mask of terror and the word “No” dropping from his lips like a mantra. Martha, terrified, turns and sees her whole family staring at something they cannot see with their eyes alone. He is there, in all of them, laughing and laughing and laughing.

“He’s dead!”

“Out! Out! Oh god get him out!”

“That face...” Tom whispers, in awe beside her. “I’ve _seen_ that face.”

Her mother is still wailing, her brother praying. Her family are hurting, are terrified. And so she tries to convince herself that it isn’t real.

“No. It can’t be real. It’s just a dream.” Martha whispers to herself. “Just a dream Martha, it’s not real. Just wake up. Wake up now. WAKE UP!”

The Master laughs and Martha Jones shakes her head in a futile effort to dislodge him from her mind. She shakes again, and again, and again...

And then she screams.

“It’s just a dream!”


End file.
